Testing Cosmology, Gravity and Inflation with BOSS

目前的宇宙学范式包括两种重要而未知的物理实体，即“暗物质”和“暗能量”。该项目旨在通过从最新的大规模星系结构调查中提取宇宙学信息来测试这一范式。所采用的方法将大大改进标准的两点测量，如功率谱，它们最终将对宇宙参数提供更严格的约束。具体来说，该项目的主要目标是(1)测量和解释重子振荡光谱调查（BOSS）中的功率谱和双谱，(2)改进当前星系偏差和红移空间扭曲的理论模型，(3)通过BOSS中星系集群的红移空间扭曲来测试大规模的重力变化，以解释当前宇宙的加速，以及(4)约束原始非高斯性。受通胀模型驱动。该项目对教育的广泛影响包括资助两名研究生在纽约大学学习三年，并将成为他们博士论文工作的一部分，研究人员将为初中和高中科学教师以及纽约大学教与学系的科学教育研究生举办研讨会。对于科学界，研究人员将提供(1)公开可用的宇宙模拟计算机代码，特别是生成非高斯初始条件；(2)通过计算机模拟生成的公开模拟星系目录。

The current cosmological paradigm includes two significant and unknown physical entities called "dark matter" and "dark energy." This project aims to test this paradigm by extracting cosmological information from the latest large-scale structure surveys of galaxies. The methods employed will yield substantial improvements over standard two-point measurements such as the power spectrum, and they will ultimately provide tighter constraints on cosmological parameters. Specifically, the project's primary goals are (1) to measure and interpret the power spectrum and bispectrum in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), (2) to improve current theoretical models of galaxy bias and redshift-space distortions, (3) to test large-scale modifications of gravity, proposed to explain the current acceleration of the Universe, by using redshift-space distortions of galaxy clustering in BOSS, and (4) to constrain primordial non-Gaussianity, motivated by inflationary models.The educational broader impacts of this project include funding for two graduate students for three years at NYU and will be part of their PhD thesis work, and the investigators will give seminars to middle school and high school science teachers and to science education graduate students at NYU's Department of Teaching and Learning. For the scientific community the investigators will provide (1) publicly available computer code for cosmological simulations, specifically to generate non-Gaussian initial conditions, and (2) public mock galaxy catalogues produced by computer simulations.